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Non-Tech : Auric Goldfinger's Short List -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (9813)	5/8/2002 8:16:11 AM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 19428

Man gets life term for murdering Tokyo stock broker .c Kyodo News Service TOKYO, May 8 (Kyodo) - (EDS: UPDATING WITH DEFENDANT FILING APPEAL) A 45-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for murdering a Tokyo stock broker in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1996 who had been his partner in a stock fraud scheme. Toru Odajima, a designer, was sentenced at the Tokyo District Court for the murder of Masaru Nishimura, 33, who worked as a broker at the Shibuya branch of Towa Securities Co., now Tsubasa Securities Co., in February 1996. Odajima, whose trial began in April 1997, had pleaded not guilty to the charge. He filed an appeal to the Tokyo High Court the same day. Prosecutors said it is disappointing that the court did not give the death penalty as they had demanded, and will now consider their next course of action. According to the ruling, Odajima murdered Nishimura on Feb. 5, 1996, by strangling him with a rope in his car near a highway interchange in Kobuchizawa, Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo. Odajima robbed Nishimura of cash, murdered him and buried his body in a forest in Fujimi, Nagano Prefecture, north of Kobuchizawa along the same highway, the ruling said. Odajima murdered Nishimura in order to get hold of 419 million yen which Nishimura had allegedly swindled from clients in a fraudulent stock scheme Odajima had devised around September 1995, the ruling said. Presiding Judge Yuichi Okada said, ''The crime was premeditated and well planned. The defendant tried to gain a huge sum of money without any labor and there is no room for leniency for such an extreme form of inhuman act.'' However, the judge said, ''There is some hope for rehabilitation, and I am hesitant to conclude that capital punishment is appropriate.'' The judge said there is ''no room for reasonable doubt'' that Odajima committed the crime, citing his admission during police questioning to killing the stock broker and other investigation results. After the murder, police initially believed that Nishimura had fled with customers' money, and they opened a fraud investigation. They started questioning Odajima after they learned he was the last person to have contact with Nishimura and that the stock broker had told acquaintances that if he went missing Odajima would know what had happened to him. Odajima was arrested in November 1996 on suspicion of faking his own kidnapping, apparently to avoid police questioning in Nishimura's disappearance. The Metropolitan Police Department later served Odajima a new arrest warrant on suspicion of murdering and robbing Nishimura and disposing of his body, which was found near a villa Odajima had been renting. The search for the body began after a woman admitted to the police she had accompanied Odajima to the villa to inspect the site prior to the murder. Odajima said he had met Nishimura around the time of the murder but had only agreed to launder money for him and had not met him since. 05/08/02 05:39 EDT Copyright 2002 The Kyodo News Service. The information contained in the Kyodo news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Kyodo News Service. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (9813)	5/8/2002 11:40:10 AM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 19428

Reform?!?

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (9813)	5/13/2002 12:12:02 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19428

Cramer's Troubles Could Get Worse Victoria Murphy, 05.09.02, 2:33 PM ET NEW YORK - Loudmouth CNBC commentator James Cramer has one more reason to yell: His nemesis, disgruntled former employee Nicholas Maier, is turning out to be a bigger thorn in Cramer's side than we predicted. In April, Forbes.com broke the news that Maier, 33, who used to be a trader at Cramer's hedge fund, had been feeding information to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission about Cramer & Co.'s allocations of initial public offerings from Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ). The SEC is conducting an investigation into the way investment banks apportioned IPO shares to clients during the height of the bull market. Now it turns out that Maier may have also persuaded the office of the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York to look into Cramer's trading. Maier boasts that, in March, he spoke with the government and handed over the transcript of his taped interview with another former trader at the hedge fund. The interview was conducted as part of his research for his book, Trading With The Enemy, a tell-all about Maier's days at the raucous Cramer & Co. trading desk. Cramer's lawyer, Eric Seiler, says that his client "is not under investigation by any U.S. attorney on any subject." Linda Lacewell, an assistant U.S. attorney, would not comment either way as to the possibility of an investigation into Cramer. But the trader in the transcript, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has confirmed that he has since been interviewed by lawyers in the U.S. attorney's office. The transcript includes some eyebrow-raising anecdotes relating to Cramer's cozy relationship with CNBC television personalities Maria Bartiromo, David Faber and Mark Haines. Since leaving his hedge fund, Cramer has joined the network as co-host of the nightly CNBC yakfest, America Now. He also frequently cavorts with Haines and Faber on its morning show, Squawk Box. In some instances, according to the taped interview, Cramer would call the anchors with a possible news lead on a company after he had already established a position in that firm. Says the trader in the taped interview: "Before he'd call Maria maybe we'd buy five or ten thousand shares of something. You know, the name that he was about to mention. He would position the firm so that when it did come out, it would be the positive or negative short or long, depending on, you know, what information he gave." The CNBC relationship allegedly worked both ways, with Cramer making trades based on information he gleaned from the on-air talent. One tale that came up during the trader's interview with assistant U.S. attorneys involved profit made on Salomon Inc. just before an announcement that the investment bank was being bought by Travelers Group in September 1997. The trader recalls Cramer saying, "That's one for Faber." A CNBC spokeswoman denies any wrongdoing and says the network has not been contacted by any legal authorities and has no knowledge of any investigation into the network or its anchors' actions. "CNBC has the highest journalistic standards in the business. David Faber, Maria Bartiromo and Mark Haines have the utmost integrity and any allegations otherwise are completely without merit," says Amy Zelvin. Cramer was too busy to be interviewed by Forbes.com today. In an earlier e-mail, he dismissed Maier's incessant attacks this way: "As someone who had a great record that was made from years of working harder than just about everyone, I find the whole thing insulting." Maier's decision to go public with this latest tidbit may have much to do with his need to bolster his own credibility. His book came under fire when its publisher, HarperCollins, acknowledged that three pages contained false assertions that Cramer traded on inside information about hard drive maker Western Digital. "I regret the error, but it was simply that we were investigated regarding a different stock," says Maier. He also concedes that his book has sold poorly, a fate that is unlikely to befall the glib and popular magazine writer who used to be his boss. This week Cramer is launching a tour promoting Confessions of a Street Addict, his confessional about what went wrong at his once-highflying Web publisher TheStreet.com. forbes.com